I’ve been reflecting recently about what it takes to run a successful business; maybe it’s with the start of a new year and lots of opportunities but who knows!
Have you ever noticed that while you are looking or thinking about something it pops up in front of you?

Martin Lewis
A couple of weeks ago Martin Lewis from Moneysupermarket.com was on BBC’s The One Show. Martin was doing some filming giving a synopsis of how he ‘made it’ and his view on business.
Martin did his economics degree at the London School of Economics and in the short film he went back to LSE and gave a talk to some students about what he has learned. He said that you need 4 things to be successful in business:

1. Talent
2. Hard Work
3. Focus – the more narrow the field and the better you are at it, the better your chances are
4. Luck!!

Some people will do all of the above and fail others will do all of the above and succeed. The only difference is LUCK!!

From my point of view: No. 1 - I think/hope I have, no.2 - yep I can do that, no. 3 - I’m getting better at but no.4???

LUCK? What is Luck?
I’m intrigued if you can do the first 3 to the best of your ability and still fail because you didn’t get any luck? What is the mystical thing called ‘luck’ and how do we get some.

Last time I looked you couldn’t buy it in John Lewis!!!

It’s because there are a lot of things in life that are out of your control.

Imagine that you’ve always wanted to run your own coffee shop (I know a few people who have this as a dream!). You’ve got lots of past retail customer experience, you’ve found your ideal place, you’ve been on all the training, you open your dream shop and work all the hours you can and you love it, but it fails!

Why does it fail? There could be lots of reasons.

It could be that we have an economic downturn and people stop buying expensive coffees or a big multi-national coffee chain opens across the road.

Whatever the reason…
Things happen, things you can’t control – unfortunately that’s life and sometimes there’s not a lot we can do about it.

The thing is, don’t beat yourself up, it’s not that other people are better than you, it’s just that they might have been luckier than you.

Be kind to yourself
And remember that most entrepreneurs including Martin Lewis, tried lots of different things before they found the one that worked.

They didn’t give up but they also knew when the time was right to move on to something else.

​They used the first 3 points above i.e. strengthened their talent, focussed on where they could make the most difference and worked hard to make it happen.